


Volatile Market

by Megan



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Slavery, F/M, Femdom, Rape/Non-con Elements, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:44:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megan/pseuds/Megan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lucky nobody krilled ya, the way ya mouthed off back there.” It won’t hurt to scare him a little, to show him that no matter how big his shame globes are—and you’re school with that, makes him more interesting—yours are always gonna be bigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Volatile Market

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gendersquare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendersquare/gifts).



Every other broker in the market claims to be selling mutants with off-spectrum blood colors, strange numbers of horns, and any other flashy, one of a kind freakishness that's too interesting to make for a cull on sight order. And the vultures-- you aren't going to compliment them by comparing them to sharks-- perk up whenever someone of your blood caste walks by, because everyone knows nobility fucking loves showing off expensive tastes.

The part that really chafes your gills is that they would be right, if they were selling anything worth buying. But no, you can spot colored lenses and smell the sour reek of blood-tinting drugs from ten feet away, and that's all anyone ever has. Most of the time, anyway; Fef had managed to snag herself a mutant little sassfish with four real, hatched-with-em horns, no telltale stress marks or scars on his brainpan that pointed to a visit from a cosmetic vivisectionist.

Fef's prize fish is way too high maintenance for you, even if his horns are real. That's what keeps you coming back to this wretched kind of place: the hope you'll net yourself a fancy-ass goldfish of a troll, someone shiny and colorful and capable of chilling out in whatever bowl you put them in when you get home.

Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.

The next lineup is full of sleepy-eyed fake limebloods; they're always easy to spot, because the idiot slave brokers use sopor slime to tint the paint. In fact, you’re ready to write the trip off entirely when you notice the last troll in the row—you don’t know what this bottom-feeding piece of sole is doing selling yellowbloods dumbed down on sopor makeup when he’s obviously got shame globes the size of both moons put together.

You’ve seen trolls painted up bright, sure, but never this blatantly: bright red, the color Pyrope’s dragon-eye sunglasses try and fail to recreate. It’s all the more obvious because this tiny-ass guppy’s red eyes are wearing the most expensive set of lenses you’ve ever seen on a slave. They’re a spot-on match to the paint he’s wearing over his cuts and the reddish-black shading of his bruises, and you wonder if someone else didn’t do the makeup job. Nobody shitty enough at his job to think those faux limebloods are convincing does work like that.

Then again, maybe he’s hoping some idiot clownfish will swoon over eyes the color of Faygo and blasphemy, and ignore the fact that he’s selling merchandise so short even you have to look down to see anything besides wild hair and hilariously nubby horns.

Nubby’s got taped-up knuckles and red peeking out of the cracked skin around his claws, and between that and the fist-shaped bruise around one of his eyes you’ve got a little fighting fish on your hands.

“Are you for reel with this?” You ask the broker, because great costume makeup is still makeup. Just to prove it, you reach out and feel his narrow shoulder—all chitin and tendons, no layer of fat softening the feel of wiry connective tissue—and get your answer when he doesn’t feel any warmer than any of the green-dyed mustardbloods next to him. If anything, he runs a couple of degrees cooler than they do.

“Please don’t touch the merchandise unless you’re serious about buying, your Excellency.” Seadwellers are the worst brokers, because not even a customer of your standing is always right with them. This one obviously spends more time doing his own eyes and gills up than he does slapping convincing paint on all but one of these slaves; maybe he’s some far-flung Ampora cousin.

On second thought, no: an Ampora would know who he was talking to and address you accordingly instead of using a generic honorific.

“Gotta make sure you’re not pulling a fast one.” It’s exactly the opposite of cute that he thinks you won’t just walk away, that his lineup of fake curiosities isn’t just as shoddy as everyone else’s. “You wanna sell him, you gotta let buoyers handle him.”

“Fine,” he says reluctantly, and steps aside.

***

You’ve managed to keep your brave face on this whole time; it’s been sweeps—okay, perigees, if you’re truthful with yourself-- since you’ve been that troll who gets scared and cries all over everything. You have a different owner in a different part of Alternia, and you’ve worked hard to cultivate a reputation as someone who punches when he’s cornered instead of someone who’s only alive because tears are interesting when they’re so brightly colored.

It’s not like you expect much to come of this; the piece of shit seadweller hawking you on behalf of someone who can’t be bothered has a reputation for pawning off lowbloods onto unsuspecting buyers who don’t realize their new show pets come courtesy of a cheap vivisectionist and some tinted lenses. And it’s no wonder he’s got that reputation, what with the fact that everyone in this line except you fits that very description.

“Let me see ya fins,” the newest sucker on the block says in the most ridiculous seadweller accent you’ve ever heard, and then you realize that maybe she’s not the gullible dilettante you’d assumed—she’s talking to you, not one of the poor bastards painted up in sopor. She doesn’t wait for you to do as you’re told; her cold grasping appendage wraps around your arm, sharp highblood talons slicing right through the battered layers of chitin and drawing blood.

You don’t dare look at her, not when you haven’t been told, but you can tell what she’s after: new cuts that won’t be painted, ones that will show off your real blood color.

“How much?” She asks, and oh, fuck, she sounds excited.

“For a one of a kind mutant?” He counters, because of course he would be an incompetent fuck who torpedoes his first potential sale of the perigee with his shitty haggling skills. “Four hundred caegars.”

You can’t help but snort at the price, even though you’ll pay for it later. There’s no way on Alternia you’re worth a tenth that, even taking into account you aren’t some costumed rustblood.

“Nubby here knows what’s up,” she said. Yeah, you’re definitely paying for your derision later, unless this idiot wises up and sets a reasonable sale price. “Forty caegars.”

“You just saw for yourself that his blood color is real,” he insists, and the edge to his voice speaks to suffering in your future if your inability to keep your feelings to yourself keeps you in his stock another night.

“He good at anything besides making you look like an idiot?” She asks, and shit, there’s your death knell. You aren’t good for much; your entire value comes from your rarity, and you’re not rare in a way that makes other trolls want to pail you. “Shit, never mind, I’ll figure it out for myself. He and I are gonna take a little trip around the wall here so I can conduct an inspection, you dig?”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Seriously, who talks like that? You would bet everything out of his mouth is a quote from some historical seadweller novel.

There’s a rustle of fabric and a snap, as if someone is opening something, and you hear someone’s palmtop beep.

“There’s my identifishcation,” she says, and you’ve only heard the strangled, bubbly sound the broker makes once before. That had been when he’d fallen for counterfeit caegars a few weeks back; bubbling noise from his gills meant he was in a rage.

“By all means, your Highness,” he hisses from between his fangs, and just like that there’s a cold hand pulling you from the line and around the corner, into the empty alley. It smells dusty back here, more like crumbling brick than dirty flesh, and that lets you catch your breath a little bit.

“Look at me, guppy, I wanna get a betta look at ya eyes.” She pushes you back, one step after another, until your back hits the wall. The sharp, broken bricks prickle right through your thin, tattered shirt.

When you’re allowed to look up at her, you realize why she gets a trial run: she’s pink around the gills, so far beyond purple she’s fuchsia. If she wants you alone to ‘inspect’ you, she gets you alone no matter what she might do to your resale value.

Your breath seizes up in your thorax at the thought of what might happen to you now.

"I like the cut of your jib, guppy," she says, cold and implacable and smiling a smile full of needle-teeth. She's nobility, a princess, and heiress, and she's got you pinned up against a wall. "Ya got globes, and that blood color's somethin' else."

Dragging you off into a more private place can only lead to one kind of 'inspection,' and she proves your instincts right when she reaches right down into the ill-fitting waistband barely holding up around your skinny pelvic bonecage. It doesn’t take much coaxing at all to drop them, as if the fabric doesn’t want anything more than to get away from you.

You’re so distracted by her that you don’t notice the tightness between your legs until your bulge slithers out of its sheath and wraps around her hand, and the sudden, unexpected shock of her chilly skin against you makes you shudder and groan.

You are so, so fucked, and you’re apparently okay with that.

***

“Shit, buoy,” you say, and he deserves the surprised bit of admiration that slips into your voice. “You’re the reel thing, ain’t ya.”

His bulge wraps around your wrist, slick and trembling and cherry-red in a way that absolutely can't be faked. Yeah, he likes you just fine, which is more than you’d expected when you had backed him against the wall. Lowbloods are always hit and miss about how they respond to the chilly touch of a seadweller, so it wouldn’t have surprised you if his bulge had locked itself up tight to hide from the cold.

It’s done just the opposite, wet and grasping to feel more of you even as its owner bites his lip to keep from saying anything. Looks like your fighting fish isn’t all tough and stoic like he pretends to be.

Hell, yes. This is going to be fun.

“Lucky nobody krilled ya, the way ya mouthed off back there.” It won’t hurt to scare him a little, to show him that no matter how big his shame globes are—and you’re school with that, makes him more interesting—yours are always gonna be bigger. “Or ya into that, guppy?”

He is so into that; wetness from his nook runs down his bulge, leaving him even slicker against your hand. You slide your hand forward to investigate, giving him no choice but to follow your lead as you push his twisting bulge aside and force his thighs apart.

“I asked ya a question.” It would be so easy to slip your fingers inside him, so easy that if you leave your hand where it is you might do it by accident, but you hold back. Maybe if you’d thought to cut your nails beforehand you could wring him dry right here against wall, barely concealed from the crowd shopping in the market outside. But of course you hadn’t, because who expects to do this except for losers like Ampora living in perpetual hope?

Slicing him open with a badly-placed claw would be a waste of that hella rare blood. He’ll have to make do with his bulge, and maybe if he does well enough—because you’ve pretty much made up your mind at this point to take him home, if only because you’ll be able to lord your real mutant over people like Zahhak who made do with robot horse slaves—you’ll throw him a pail later.

“Yes,” he says, and he sounds as surprised at the admission as you feel, as if he doesn’t mean to say it at all. His eyes are half-closed but definitely not looking down at the floor; whatever’s driven him to answer you honestly also leaves him brave enough to look at you with those crazy red eyes of his. And if you hadn’t already seen proof enough of his real blood color dripping all over your arm and onto the floor, the almost pink flush from his hairline to his throat would have convinced you. “Yes, I’m into that-- are you happy now?”

“Hell yes, I am,” you say, delighted. Your own bulge is stirring at the sight of him, battered and bruised and putting on a brave face, but there’s a time and a place for a free troll with dignity to fill her pail and this isn’t it. 

You turn your attention back to his bulge; the slide of your palm over him isn't as rough as you might like, softened by how slippery he is, but it sends a shiver through his body that knocks a shower of brick dust down from the wall. And suddenly, it’s like that same tremor knocks an idea loose in your head. This isn’t a place for you to pail, no, but that hardly goes for mutant property, now does it?

“Gotta know how good you are before I make an investment,” you tell him as you guide his bulge back, and by the time he realizes what you’re doing it’s too late for him to do anything but chirp. That’s the only word for the sound he makes as his own bulge thrashes out of pure instinct, your hand pinning it into place and keeping him from slipping out of his own nook.

***

When she finally relents, everything’s ruined: your pants, your reputation, and what little dignity you had managed to convince yourself you still possessed. You’re crying, you realize sort of distantly, panting for breath between choked-up sobs. Every shaky breath you force into your thorax reminds you how strung-tight everything inside of you feels, your genetic material sac full—whatever advantage had selected for redundant reproductive systems in trolls clearly doesn’t extend to not kicking in when it’s not needed.

“You ain’t four hundred caegars, guppy, but maybe I’ll let that basshoal talk me up a little bit.” Just the sound of another troll’s voice makes your bulge thrash and squirm, feeding right back into the loop of sensation leaving you a wreck. “And if ya reel good, I’ll let ya show me what you can do with those taped-up fins of yours.”

You can’t tell whether it’s a threat, a proposition, or both, and you’re not sure it matters.

Your nook definitely doesn’t care, not when your own bulge is the only thing keeping you from spilling genetic material all over the street.

“Keep yourself together until I get you back home,” she says, eyes bright behind her glasses. “I know ya can manage that, you’re a tough little fish.”


End file.
